A Month of Favorites Day 4: Six Degrees of Separation (Updated)

If I start with the Man Booker award winning book The Narrow Road to The Deep North, as this meme was supposed to begin, it reminds me of the previous Man Booker Award winning book…

The Luminaries, written in a 19th century voice which reminds me of…

The Crimson Petal and the White because it was based on the poem written in 1847 by Alfred Lord Tennyson (“Now Sleeps The Crimson Petal”).

The Crimson Petal and The White is written by Michel Faber, whose latest novel, The Book of Strange Things is something I’m anxious to read, along with another latest release by Haruki Murakami…

The Strange Library which reminds me of another strange library told to us by Audrey Niffenegger…

The Night Bookmobile.

And there is a fresh Six Degrees of Separation starting with the book title given to us by Annabel.

The earlier post is as follows:

I was totally confused on how to go about this post. My husband and I pondered ways to write it over dinner at Jin 28 last night. “Mmmm, maybe I can tie in how I read Madeline L’Engle’s book A Wrinkle in Time when I was in sixth grade, and became so enamored with her writing that I began collecting everything she ever wrote, and then was privileged enough to meet her at Wheaton College in the late 1980’s…Let me just email Andi to see if I’m going in the right direction.”

Andi promptly talked me off the ledge, and said, “It’s basically a string of books. One reminds you of another book and so on. It can be thematic similarities, plot, imagery, setting or whatever strikes ya!” Then she credited Katie from Words for Worms with the idea. So…

if I start with Lost for Words because it’s a hilarious parody on winning a literature prize in England, I’m immediately reminded of The Parrots which is another witty parody on winning a literature prize in Italy.

Reading about a setting in Italy reminds me of Ten which is a collection of stories which occurs in Naples. Ten reminds me of the fabulous reading I did for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize last winter, of which The Mussel Feast was one of my favorites of the bunch.

So, there’s a stream of consciousness resulting in 6 Degrees of Separation. It was so much fun to connect books that I’ve enjoyed this year, I think I just may do this again sometime. What a fun week this has been to post about favorite books!

Find more degrees of separation posts here. And, apparently I missed the jump off point which was supposed to be Narrow Road To The Deep North. I may do this over if I have time…

The stories in this collection are quite powerful stories of “the underbelly” of Naples. I was riveted by them, but found they could were best read in short doses. I hope you can find a copy, I had to download mine on my Kindle as no bookstore near me had a copy.

Awesome post! Andi is the best at talking people off ledges, isn’t she? I wish I could claim credit for the concept, but this bad boy was the brain child of Annabel Smith and Emma Chapman. They do a monthly meme of it and it’s the most fun!

One of these things is not like the other: The list starting with Anabel’s prompt has six books I haven’t read and probably won’t get around to reading. The list starting with your choice has one I’ve read (Dinner), two I own and will read (Mussel and Mother), and three that I very much want to read.

I’m glad that then ist I did in incorrectly suited your reading tastes more exactly than the assigned one. Funny how that works. I was deeply effected by The Mussel Feast, looking at the father’s emotional hold on the family not as an illustration of government as I believe it was intended, but as the power of an emotionally disturbed husband. Everyone was in bondage to him, until they found some inner strength. Well, we’ll talk when you read it, I hope.

So you did it! I’ve been thinking of you at the library today when perusing the English books section. I’ve found a copy of the Flanagan’s: it was fast (it took one year for The Luminaries – which I haven’t read – to reach the shelves!) I haven’t borrowed it but I’ll be interested in your thoughts when you have read it.
I’m curious aboutThe Strange Library too.

How interesting that it took so long to reach your shelves, and I thought it took forever for books to reach Shreve’s in the US! I’m currently beginning The Narrow Road to the Deep North; the writing is quite piercing already, and I’ve only read about ten pages. I hope I can get through it because war is a hard subject for me to read. As for The Strange Library I bought it just the other day. It’s short,mbut I’m not sure when I’ll open it. During Christmas vacation, most likely.

Will you read The Luminaries? It was long and complicated, I can’t imagine it in a second language, but you are so strong in English. I thought it a marvelous read.

What a fun (and thought-provoking!) meme. When my brain isn’t filled with all my To Do list projects, I may have to give this a try for a future post.

The Crimson Petal and the White has been on my shelves for many years. I wonder if I put it on my 2015 reading list, will I really read it? I’m actually toying with the idea of making 2015 the Year of Rereads. Maybe not entirely, but at least one a month. We shall see.